slomo007 wrote:It could be someone bidding on their own item, to up the value.

And that happens A LOT on eBay. All it takes is a seller creating another username (which takes about two seconds to do) and upping the bids. No risk to the strategy (if you end up winning your own auction, you just re-list it).

It's one of the big problems with eBay. I wish they'd make it impossible to log on as two different people from the same IP addy... but then again folks would just call their friends and have THEM up the bidding FOR them... so there's really no way to stop it.

slomo007 wrote:It could be someone bidding on their own item, to up the value.

And that happens A LOT on eBay. All it takes is a seller creating another username (which takes about two seconds to do) and upping the bids. No risk to the strategy (if you end up winning your own auction, you just re-list it).

It's one of the big problems with eBay. I wish they'd make it impossible to log on as two different people from the same IP addy... but then again folks would just call their friends and have THEM up the bidding FOR them... so there's really no way to stop it.

I agree it really sucks though...especially since I passed on a fat pair of skis last night because I couldn't bring myself to impulse buy

Haven't seen the problems you guys have talked about in my 3 years, luck I guess, but there is one problem we've talked about here which I've noticed a lot. The jacking up on shipping prices. I look at an item with a couple hours remaining that I want and say, "hmm thats unusally a low price to be at at this point." Sure enough the shipping costs are way overboard.

People who bid on their own auctions to up the price get caught a lot. I've had it happen to me once, and eBay nullified all of the auctions that guy ran so I got my money back. I've been buying and selling on eBay for 6 years and that's the only instance I can think of that involved me.

Back when I first started, I used to get my friend to bid a certain amount on some auctions because that was the minimum I wanted to receive. So not really cheating per se, but just a reserve that you don't have to pay for. I guess it kind of is cheating actually. But I've had guys try to pull the wool over my eyes enough times to justify doing it...

BTW there used to be a site called eSnipe that would automatically bid a certain amount at a certain time for you, and it was free. Are there any sites like that still around?

I had a funny thing happen to me the other day that fits this conversation topic. We had posted a film camera for sale because we wanted to get a digital camera. We were hoping for about $30 for the little Elph we owned. Well, in the middle of the auction (listed for 5 days), my 6-year old cat got really sick. Two days and seven hundred dollars later*, we decided we weren't going to be buying a digital camera because of all of the money we just poured into the cat, so we wanted to keep our film camera.

There was one problem, though. The camera had been bid on, and there was no way to end the auction without pissing some people off. Not wanting to do that, we simply created another account and wayyyyy overbid everyone ($50+) so that we would win our own auction. Well, at the last second, someone sniped us on our own item! We didn't expect it at all. After all, similar items had only gone for $20 - $30 in the last few weeks.

In the end, we decided to take the person's money and to look for a cheap digital camera on eBay. Afterwards, I thought about how many people probably bid up their own items, and I had a good laugh about it. I bet many of them aren't nearly as successful percentage-wise as we were, and we weren't even trying!

* - If you think that's too much to spend on a pet, don't go there with me. I voluntarily took the responsibility of caring for that animal, and I was not about to let him die from something 100% cureable. That would be unbelievably selfish of me.

Last edited by StlSluggers on Wed Dec 15, 2004 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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StlSluggers

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Ebay is a crock for almost everything that multiple people would want. By time you factor in the outrageous shipping charges, you save 20 bucks or something lame on an item that is not even guranteed to arrive, let alone be in good shape. Might as well just bye it at the store .

LBJackal wrote:People who bid on their own auctions to up the price get caught a lot. I've had it happen to me once, and eBay nullified all of the auctions that guy ran so I got my money back. I've been buying and selling on eBay for 6 years and that's the only instance I can think of that involved me.

Back when I first started, I used to get my friend to bid a certain amount on some auctions because that was the minimum I wanted to receive. So not really cheating per se, but just a reserve that you don't have to pay for. I guess it kind of is cheating actually. But I've had guys try to pull the wool over my eyes enough times to justify doing it...

BTW there used to be a site called eSnipe that would automatically bid a certain amount at a certain time for you, and it was free. Are there any sites like that still around?